Laughterlust
by Chevira Lowe
Summary: FFX-2 SPOILERS. Shounen ai. Baralai and Gippal centric.


L.A.U.G.H.T.E.R.L.U.S.T. 

A/N: …Because let's face it. Those two were just begging to be slashed. Slightly A/U, because it implies that Gippal and Baralai had met again before becoming the leaders of their respective groups. …Consider it an exercise in dialogue, rather than detail.

Warnings: SHOUNEN AI. Glowy sexual aftermath. Fluff. …Urgh. Fluff. -.-; This is the result of my listening to 'Sen no Kotoba' by Koda Kumi, so be afraid. 

Very afraid.

There will also be several S~P~O~I~L~E~R~S. I'm a good portion of sixty percent through the chaptered game. If you're not at least into chapter three, chances are you won't A) understand what the hell is going on, or B) want to know. So. Take the red pill, or the blue pill, Neo, because the choice is yours.

*~*

I really don't understand this whole concept of a 'deathseeker'. 

…Dying is a frightening concept. Not unfamiliar, just…frightening. I understand it, as well as any human can, and understand that it is inevitable. 

But why go looking for it? It finds you soon enough, no matter how hard you try and avoid it. No matter how hard to run from it. 

_It is always there. _

It's a part of humanity, a part of evolution. Whatever paths have been set, laid down for us before time was a word, they all end in death, and a brief encounter with the beyond. The Farplane is the eternal destination of 'All Things Dead', a tender utopia that holds so much meaning, and yet…

I've been there. Once. Shortly after Operation Mi'Hen. I was looking for…yes. Yes, you've already read my mind. You know the reason I was there. We were separated, the four of us. I didn't know if I was the only one left, if any of you were still alive. 

It was a massacre. The sort of thing that parents and grandparents conveniently edit out of the war-tide stories that they tell their children and grandchildren. The sort of thing that is forever etched into their memories, always in their shadows, and their footsteps. 

I would have thought that the Deathseeker would have died in that place. He had been trying to find a way out for so long, it would have seemed fitting if 'Nooj the Undying' would have met his hand in that final, bloody melee. The machina that you had been so fervently believed in had failed. 

…I don't really remember what I was thinking at the time. It was as though I had been running on auto-pilot, those final days during which the preparations were being made. The Crusaders were all so hopeful. 'We'll beat Sin! We'll protect our loved ones! We'll make sure no one ever has to suffer tragedy again!' 

…But…that right there…_that _was the tragedy. 

So many people died that day. In the blink of an eye, hundreds upon hundreds of lives simply ceased to exist. Dashed upon the bulkhead of time. They won't be forgotten, not for a generation at least. There will always be those who were left behind. The children too young to remember their fathers and mothers, the wives and husbands who hoped against hope that their spouse would come home safely, only to find out weeks, even months later that they had died in that cursed crusade. 

I've never liked war, but that doesn't mean I don't understand it. It's necessary, it's inevitable—perhaps even more so than death. Because there will always be disagreements between those who share different beliefs. No amount of anything can bring them together, that they might embrace each other as children of a forgotten age. 

That recourse disappeared when innocence died. And innocence died a long, long time ago. 

I've tried—hah, several times, to explain my theories to you, on why people fight. Sometimes, you cock your head to one side and listen intently, others you just groan and shake your head. Sometimes, I wonder if you're at all receptive to it, others I wonder if anything I say will get through your thick skull. 

"You're thinking again, aren't you?" You prop yourself up on an elbow, a hand supporting your head. "I _hate _that. When we're in bed, you think of one thing and one thing only. My incredibly sexy self." You flop back onto the bed and arch your back like a cat. 

"So there's rules now, are there?" 

"'Course! Y'see, the glowy aftermath of…" and you pause, a devilish smirk etched across your face. "_sexual__ intercourse, especially with—yours truly." You sweep your hand upwards in an elaborate gesture that one would usually associate with the additional gestures of a bow. "You're supposed to be so heady from the exhilaration of it all that you shouldn't be able to form coherent thought for—ooh…the next twenty four hours, at LEAST."_

"Well, you're nothing if not cocky." 

"Baralai!" Your voice is sharp, but I can sense the amusement under the surface. "You have no idea how MUCH I resent that comment!" 

"Considering you just told me…" 

"Aw, shuddup man. After all the gra-ti-fi-cation I served up on a silver platter, you should be more grateful." You reach a slender hand out and poke my ribs. "C'mon. Be grateful…don't make me break out the hypnosis, man."

"You know…" I begin, batting at your hand in amusement. "I was thinking, the other day, about the machina, and how it's all 'forbidden' by the Yevonites…"

"ARGH!" You groan and pull your pillow over your face, pressing down with one battle-scarred hand. "Not listening!" Your voice is a muffled baritone from underneath the barrier. 

I smirk and yawn, settling back amongst the remaining pillows and assorted disarrayed bed sheets. "Will we ever find them?"

You peek out from beneath your safe haven. "Them? Paine and Nooj? It's in the bag, man. Totally in the bag. Found you, didn't I?"

That wasn't even close to the truth. _I _had found _you. Sleeping like a baby outside a bar in Luca, drunker than a fiend on fermented corn. There was actually enough alcohol in your system to come up on a 'scan' screen, indicative of poison._

So, like the proverbial bad penny, I picked you up, dusted you off, and—well. To toy with an interesting euphemism, put you in my pocket. You had always had the uncanny ability to drink enough alcohol to float a boat, and wake up fresh as a daisy the next morning. It was the morning after THAT morning that put you through hell. 

*

"I can't believe I found you, man. I thought you were dead! Like…deader than dead. Doornail type dead. I looked everywhere! Even dragged my lazy ass to Zanarkand on the lameass, off-chance you might be there. I spent TWO WEEKS haunting the Farplane, trying to see if you'd show up there—as a ghost or whatever! But then, there was always the chance you'd turned into a fiend…but then, I figured you were better than that, and I wanted to make sure—"

"Gippal. Stop talking."

"And the only thing I found out about Paine was this mention of her—but I have no clue how reliable the information was, and I haven't seen hide nor hair of Nooj, and man, he WANTED to die! You were there! You heard Paine! What if he really did get killed! I—we—should have stopped him. We shouldn't have gotten separated! That's what being a squad was all about, man!" I had never seen you less composed. There were tears glistening in your eyes. Almost of their own accord, my hands reached for you, and you collapsed into my tepid embrace. 

You had never been the sort of person that needed anyone else. Sixteen years old, and already as talented as you were. No one was better with machina, and few were better with weapons. 

"Please…man, I don't wanna get left alone again. You guys were my family." 

Family is such an odd word, on so many levels. It has no true definition, and is instead as amorphous and as changing as the wind. How can you define 'family' to someone who never had one? Or to someone who ran away from what they _did have?_

"This…" your voice was strangely unsteady, "is what happens when I drink. Here I am, making myself look like an idiot…"

"There's nothing idiotic about being afraid." I shrugged a shoulder. "It's a chemical response to factors beyond our control." 

"Man. _Man.__ Enough of that shit, Baralai. I don't wanna hear it. Not right now, okay? Now I just wanna find Paine and Nooj, and I want things to go back to the way they were. That's all I want. Back when we could just stand around and laugh with each other. Like that time—on that ship, remember? Just before Operation Mi'hen? We sat around that night on the deck, just doing nothing. We were happy. …and then…all that shit happened…"_

"Please stop talking, Gippal. Please." I don't remember why I was so against your eclectic rambling. Maybe it brought to light certain aspects of my life I had been trying to shelter everyone—including myself, from.

"Her recorder was smashed all to shit! That's all I found of Paine's! She was good, but she wasn't that good! But I couldn't find her body…I looked everywhere! It'll be our fault if she's dead, you know that—right?" 

"Stop it!" I rarely lost my temper—it just wasn't something I did. And yet, right then, I simply couldn't take another word. All of it seemed to whisper of one thing, and one thing only. The failure of Crimson Squad. I won't be noble—I won't ramble about how it was my fault alone. I know that there were several combined issues that saw us fall from grace. How Nooj the Undying was searching desperately for a way to die—how the young Al Bhed kid was too reckless and cocky for his own good…

And my faults. I won't even begin to list them, for I have no wish to discuss my lesser non-virtues until all hours of the early morning.

You had fallen silent, and were trembling slightly with what was perhaps a combination of the effects of the alcohol and your roiling emotions. 

"Sorry, man. Sorry. …I'm just glad that I found someone, y'know." 

"I have a hotel room here. They're putting up the survivors of Operation Mi'hen for really good rates. It's a bit of a publicity stunt, but…you wanna come and rest a while? If you want, we can keep searching for Paine and Nooj in a few days." 

Truth was, I had given up on ever seeing any of you again. I had looked for a few months, and that was that. 

I've never…been the sort to believe in people. It's something I've just had to live with all my life, and I find I don't miss that 'believing', because I've never done it. How can you miss something when you've never experienced it?

*

"Damn it, Baralai. You're thinking again." 

I have a tendency to do that too much, don't I?

"Sorry," I smile and shake my head, reaching up to tangle a hand in my hair. "I forgot, thinking around you is outlawed." 

"Well…that's up for debate. 'Cause, y'know, it depends on what you're thinking ABOUT…" a devilish smirk creeps over your features, the sort that is a prequel to mass mayhem and destruction, usually of the pillow-flinging sort. But the anticipated attack of linen and feathers never comes.

I would never have thought that we would end up this way, you and I. Yes, we got along fine, but that was it. You'd always had some sort of girl hanging off your arm, and I'd had my fair share of offers. But war does funny things to people. Massacres even more so. I guess…once you've seen how fragile human life is, and how much it hurts when it ends, you tend to aim a little higher. You want someone who can look after themselves, someone who knows which end of a gun is which, and someone who isn't afraid to look a threat in the eye and blow it away.

"I wanna go back, y'know." Now you're trying purposefully to distract me from my random train of thought. "I always felt bad after Home was destroyed. …I never went to check on anyone. Like it or not, I grew up with those people."

"So you're going to Bikanel?" 

You lace your fingers behind your head. "Yup. Got a friend there—Nhadala. It's been a while since I've seen her; I might hang out for a bit, check some things out. You wanna come?" 

"Ah…no." We might have been sleeping together for a matter of months, but that doesn't mean I was at all considering this a serious commitment. It was, and I hate to sound cruel, but it was just an inventive way to pass the time. 

"Suit yourself then." You grin again. "Won't you be jealous? Nhadala's pretty hot, y'know." 

"Oh, I'll be heartbroken." I can't help the sarcasm. "But if you want to fool around, go ahead. Besides, I wouldn't ever know unless you told me."

"Heeeeeey, good point." The pillow came then, though delayed, and batted me full in the face. "You're good at that logic thing, Baralai." 

"Well, we all know that I live for your praise, Gippal," and with that, I attack. Within moments, the air is thick with feathers, and both you and I are laughing. It's a funny thing, laughter. It can take so many forms. But this…times like these are truly happy. Times like these, I don't have to think about yesterday or tomorrow or next year or where my next meal is coming from, or when I'm next going to be faced with a decision I'd rather not make. 

Laughter is freedom. And that's an interesting revelation, because most people consider _hope to be freedom. But hope is more binding than most people know. It ties you down, restricts your ideals and your directions. It means that you have something that you must, no matter what tolls it may take, believe in. And that's bullshit. _

No matter where you are, there is always room for laughter. The nervous chuckling before a battle, the triumphant crowing after a victory. The embarrassed sort, when you're caught red-handed doing something not quite publicly acceptable. 

"I'll miss ya, man." You hiccup around a mouthful of feathers to get the statement out, and I smile. 

"Yeah, I know. I'll miss you too." 

"But we'll meet again." You're on your knees, hands splayed flat on the bed before you, that roughish grin still upon your face. "I'll see to that." 

"Then I leave it in your capable hands." 

"…You sure that's not the only thing you'd like to leave there?" 

Somehow…you always manage to make me laugh. 

To set me free. 

And that's enough for now.


End file.
